


The Entire History of Everything

by anonymous_sibyl



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-29
Updated: 2005-09-29
Packaged: 2017-10-04 04:14:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymous_sibyl/pseuds/anonymous_sibyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, when you play a game, only one player knows the rules.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Entire History of Everything

**Author's Note:**

> This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/). None of the media or characters written about in my fanfiction belong to me and I make no profit from these works.

In the entire history of everything there's only ever been one way this could end.

Laura is older, some might say wiser, and she recognizes the things Lee refuses to see. She tried to pretend she didn't, she ignored every touch of his hand, every glance across a crowded room, every painful stab in her heart when he smiled at Lt. Thrace. Denial is a powerful advocate, she is more than willing to let it argue her case, and pain in her chest can so easily be dismissed as the cancer that is eating her from the inside.

Lee is young and handsome, and he deserves more than what she has to offer. He knows that, he must know that, and, so, while he kisses Lt. Thrace, Laura focuses on The Arrow, sets her sights on what she can do and can have, rather than dreaming as little girls do.

Even were it an option, there are no white silk dresses in the fleet. There are no imported flowers or expensive champagnes. There are no flower girls, no ring-bearers, and no fairy-tale weddings for Laura Roslin. She is what she is, and her role here is not princess, but rather the aged queen guiding her young champion, making of him a worthy successor, a man who would be wanted by any princess delicate enough to notice the flaw in her featherbeds. And this, of course, is how she's dreaming still. Kara Thrace is no fragile girl, just as Laura Roslin is no wicked witch, and Lee Adama is no white knight, hard though he tries to be.

Every woman of a certain age knows just how to make herself fall out of love, and Laura Roslin is a woman of a certain age, with a certain intellect, and a certain need to not feel her heart crack in her chest at the mere sight of a boy who has no idea what game he's playing, and playing well. She gets angry, at times, curses Lee for his youth, his naivete, for the way he acts as if he needs and values her, for the way he so obviously cares and yet will never care enough. She needs more than he can ever imagine, and yet exactly what he provides.

She's angry, still, when he comes to her in her tent, grieving over her dead, and furious with herself for allowing him to support her when she'd vowed to cut off this desperate and obvious need for him. She's heard the whispers, some kind, some not, all agreeing that Madame President Roslin, rigid though she is, will bend for her Captain Apollo.

"Captain."

He blinks at her choice of title, ever-sensitive to her ways of naming him, overly-sensitive to her ways. "Laura," he replies firmly, and her breath hitches. "May I?" he continues, and gestures at the ground.

She neither speaks nor moves, and yet somehow he knows he may. It is still raining, her shelter is small, and it's far more comforting than she wants to consider to sit arm to arm with him. She is very tired and she knows that his shoulders are wide enough to support her burdens, knows that she could lay her head on him and her burdens down, and he would allow that, even encourage it. She also knows he would have no idea what it means, to her or to all the watchers in the dark. This is a game she's tired of playing alone.

"What can I do for you, Captain?"

The shiver travels from his arm to hers, and lodges in her throat.

"I thought there might be something I could do for you."

"I am well taken care of," she says, vaguely gesturing toward Billy and Tom Zarek, then toward Lee's own father. There are men in her life, many of them, and it's possible a combination of them could do for her a tenth of what Lee Adama can do by simply saying her name.

"If you don't need me," he says, words trailing off, as he half-rises.

"I do," she whispers. Gods, the boy's smile is bright. In a moment of fancy she imagines it illuminates her tent and that its light is reflected back in her eyes. She closes them, just in case, and when she re-opens them he's looking at her curiously.

"Have I done something?"

"Yes," she says, because he has. "And you need to stop."

"Stop?" he repeats. "I don't understand. Laura?"

He is reaching for her, palm up, fingers spread. She wonders if he even realizes, knows he doesn't. Lee is a good man, valiant, caring, and proud, and he has not the faintest of ideas how to relate to others. It's one of the reasons she allowed him to get so close, and it's the main reason she needs to get away.

"We are too close, Captain. There's been... talk." As she says it, she knows it's a weak excuse, a story he will not believe.

"Talk? You mean gossip," he says, angry now, voice rough, but still quiet and low. "Since when are you one to bow to gossip, Madame President?"

"We are too close, _Lee_."

That he believes. "Are we?" He closes his fingers in on his palm, then pounds his fist on his leg. "There hasn't been talk, has there? This is... you? You don't want me, you don't need me." His eyes rake across the campsite and she wonders if he's staring at Billy, Zarek, or Daddy Dearest. "Things are better now, and you don't need me. I understand."

He's hurt, and angry, and she could let this go. She could let him leave, watch him walk away, and choke on the lump in her throat which rivals in size the one in her breast. It would solve the problem. It would solve her problem. He would be hurt and angry, but he'd get over it. Lt. Thrace would get him drunk and frak him senseless, and he'd get over it. The thought makes her pause. Of all the things she has said and done, all the morals she's sacrificed, all the medicines she's swallowed, it's funny to her that jealousy is the bitterest of them all.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, and he eases back down beside her.

"Are we too close?" he asks, his evenly-spaced words falling on her like blows. "Are we?"

What answer is there to give him? Is there a lie she can tell to make this easier, a lie that will send him away and remove the feelings she doesn't want to have? Finally she settles on the truth, her best weapon in times of trouble. "It's you," she says. "You're too close. To me. You're too close to me."

He apologizes and she knows he doesn't understand.

"I'm too close to you," she tries again. "You and I, this, it is," she searches for a word, "inappropriate. Our relationship is inappropriate."

"Why?"

He really doesn't know. He plays this game better than any man she's ever known, better than oily Zarek or brutish Adama, better than Adar who was polished and suave. The problem is that Lee has no idea he's playing nor is he aware of the stakes.

"You," she says, wishing she didn't have to, wishing he understood, wishing he knew himself the way he knows her. "You act toward me as if..." There are no words for this, she has no words for this! "You cross lines, Captain. You do things you should not, say things you should not, and I was wrong to allow it." When his face falls, she decides to continue, to give more of herself than she'd intended. It's far less of her than he has already won, so she's not worried. "And I react to you in ways I should not. It is entirely inappropriate."

Light will be dawning in their campsite soon enough, but she watches it dawn in her tent right then.

"You..." he says. "You?"

"Me."

Across the camp Lt. Thrace laughs, and Lee smiles before turning his attention back to Laura. In that one moment all her questions are answered. In the entire history of everything there's only ever been one way this could end. This is not that way.


End file.
